


Death Walks As A Child

by orphan_account



Category: Fallout 3
Genre: Other, Parent Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 18:06:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1827418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death isn't a friend, not really, but in the end they are all each other has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Death Walks As A Child

Ellen first sees her when she is four and watching her dad work. The other girl is small, sickly, with gaunt cheeks and a thin smile that seems to break her face her dress sags on her thin, hungry body and her bony hands with too long fingers clutch a stuffed bear with the ear torn off.

But it is her eyes that unnerve Ellen the most, they are black and white, with no iris to be seen in the middle while the whites of her eyes seems to glow brighter than the fluorescent lights on the vaults ceiling. Her eyes though, how sick and nerve wracking they are, seem to soften when they look at Ellens' father.

Ellen despite being four and preferring silence to the voices of others and the loud whirring of machines in the vault knows something is wrong when her father doesn’t look up to great the newcomer. So she sits, and watches, and just when she is about to say something the other girl speaks up.

 _He will do great things,_ the girl says without moving her lips and Ellen jolts up from her place on the couch and stares at the other girl in the room.

"Who are you?" Ellen asks, and the girl looks at her, startled, before smiling wickedly.

 _I am the End,_ she says, then, with the sound of wings, she is gone.

* * *

 

Their next meeting is when she kills the radroach in the lower levels of the vault. The girl appears standing next to Jonas, smiling at Ellen and her father as though they were long lost friends. Ellen scowls at her and the girl only grins wider.

"Something the matter champ?" Jonas asks.

"I'm fine," she says quickly, turning her gaze to Jonas and flashing him her most charming smile, she is not fine, far from it with the other girl here but, again, neither of them seem to notice her so Ellen says nothing.

When the camera goes off, the girl waves and vanishes.

* * *

 

The next time sees the girl, she is nineteen and running to escape the vault. She appears when Kendell is torn down by radroaches, and waits by her side while she kills those attacking Butchs' mother. She smiles, showing cracked teeth, when Ellen manages to save Ms. Deloria.

 _Well now,_ she says, _that was unexpected._

Ellen ignores her and continues on.

When she stumbles, half-blind into the sunlight the girl next to her throws her arms open and grins.

 _Welcome to my kingdom,_ she says, _I am Death._

Ellen wants nothing more than to throttle her at that moment. But the sun still hurts her eyes and words refuse to form in her dry, cracked mouth.

Still, she sticks her middle finger up at the girl.

The girl laughs.

 _Yes,_ she said, _I thought you might say that._

The girl gives her a sad smile and disappears once again.

* * *

 

Later Death, as the girl calls herself, becomes an almost constant companion to Ellen in The Wastes. She doesn't warn, or help, with the dangers of wandering The Wastes, she merely watches as Ellen deals with Raiders and Super Mutants, and after the battles are over, Death doesn't bother to help Ellen with her wounds.

"If you're not going to help," Ellen asks, hissing in pain as she stiches up a wound on her shoulder, "Why are you here?"

 _Everyone ends sometime,_ Death says, _I am just waiting for you to._

"Why? The Wastes are full of death. Shouldn't you be having a party with everyone that dies?" They've never had a party, and, really the parties in The Valut had been _shit._

 _They are not you,_ Death says, and doesn't speak again.

* * *

 

When Ellen reunites with her father Death follows him around like a lost puppy, watching him with sad eyes as he talks about his work.

Ellen ignores her, and continues talking with her father.

* * *

 

Death stands next to her father and the only thing Ellen can think is; _No not him anyone but him. He can't leave me again he can't._

Death takes him anyway, and Ellen is alone again.

* * *

 

She doesn't speak to Death after her father dies.

Death never apologises and Ellen wants to hate her for it, but why would she apologise? She was just doing her job after all.

That doesn't make it hurt any less.

* * *

 

Eden wants the ghouls dead, he wants a genocide and he wants Ellen to be his tool of destruction.

Ellen thinks of Gob and his almost-mother.

She thinks of Death, and she refuses.

She is her fathers' daughter, and she will not be a tool.

Beside her, Death smiles.

* * *

 

Ellen is dying, she can feel it, the radiation in the chamber soaks into her bones and her vision blurs. She reaches out to the keypad and with shaking fingers types the number 2:16.

It is the last thing she will ever type, and this chamber will be the last thing she ever sees. She laughs, she will die in the same spot as her father, it's fitting somehow, that the daughter ends where her father had.

Death is beside her when she stumbles to her knees.

 _Do you know what you are?_ Death asks.

 _Sacrifice,_ Ellen answers without speaking.

 _And?_ Death asks again.

_Life._

Death grins, toothless and hard.

 _Come with me,_ she says.

 _I can't,_ Ellen says, and Death laughs.

Ellen smiles and stays.

* * *

 

They call Ellen the Lone Wanderer because takes no companions with her out into The Wastes. Ellen laughs when she hears this, she already has a companion worth more than any other.

Death, standing beside her in an old stained dress, grins and takes her hand.

She smiles.


End file.
